


Maithuna

by Leyenn



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Empathy, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, Telepathy, mental manipulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-23
Updated: 2010-02-23
Packaged: 2017-10-07 12:21:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/65109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leyenn/pseuds/Leyenn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>an act of uniting two things into one state of being; a spiritual uniting in order to bring about concord.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Maithuna

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladyvivien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyvivien/gifts).



> For ladyvivien, who requested the ready room (which should be a TNG cliche if more people would just write it). Deliberately non-specific, could be any time when Picard is away/reassigned/captured/assimilated/dead/missing and Riker is temporarily in charge. (I thought about this. There are rather a lot of these times.)

There are six good paces to Picard's ready room, without deliberately walking into the corners or banging one's head against the walls. He's on his thirty-seventh go round when the door opens.

He doesn't really have to look to know who else is still up at this ridiculous hour of the morning. He should have realised he's too restless for her to be able to sleep.

He sighs, stops pacing and braces his fists on the desk. "Sorry," he says tiredly, still without turning. Deanna sneaks up behind him and rests her hand on his back.

"You couldn't sleep."

"No." He lets her hand stay there. It's warm, warmer than it should be if she were completely Human: his body recognises that touch instantly, relaxes against it. He's more intimately familiar with Deanna's touch than he is most other people's faces.

"Will," she says. It's clearly a reprimand.

"I know, I know." He's not going to be of any use to the Captain or the ship if he runs himself into the ground with fatigue. But doesn't she think if he could stay still, he'd be in his own bed dead to the world right now, rather than usurping Picard's office like some caged animal with its teeth pulled?

Deanna sighs. "I know you would be," she says quietly, though he hasn't voiced that rather snappish retort out loud. He feels her other hand join the first, then, and then he bites back a groan as she rubs both hands up either side of his spine. That feels entirely too good for how he wants to feel right now, or how he should ever feel while standing in someone else's ready room, let alone their own Captain's.

"You need to relax, Will." She doesn't raise her voice, but the firm almost-professional tone in it manages to make him smile. Only almost professional, as always with Deanna, in private, because they're both aware that she can hardly advise him on his mental state with perfect objectivity. (He's probably the only member of the crew who never sees a counselor, outside his mandatory assessments. He's also the one who sees one the most.)

"If you have anything to help with that, I'm open to suggestions." He wouldn't mind getting some sleep, he really wouldn't. He just can't slow his mind down long enough - pacing hasn't been doing much good, either, but at least it's given him something to concentrate on other than _what do I do next?_

He turns to face her. She's out of uniform, wearing a soft purple dress not unlike the blue one that drives a fair percentage of the crew slightly wild, except her arms are bare. Not that she should be in uniform, at this time of night, when she's clearly off duty - but it makes him realise that she is off duty and she's still here, come to find him and ease whatever's bothering him, if she can.

Of course, a small part of him insists, he's obviously keeping her up, too. It may not be an entirely altruistic gesture on her part.

"You know that's not true." She's stepped back when he turned, and now she takes that step back to him. This time her hand rests immediately over his heart, and he can immediately feel it pounding loudly in his chest. Tense as he is, he hasn't realised he's quite this worked up. Trust Deanna to make him spot it.

"Breathe," she says. He's taking an obedient breath in before he even realises it. Her lips twitch in a tiny smile as he lets it out, slowly. She keeps her hand there, just pressing gently, and he takes that as an order to keep going. One more measured breath, two, and then as he's letting that out, he feels her - warm and golden-violet-velvet-black, sliding smoothly into his mind.

_Relax, Will._

_I'm trying._ He can't quite feel what she's doing inside his head, but when his fingers start to twitch with holding still he brings his hands up to her waist, and the contact seems to drive that restless feeling away. _What are you doing?_

_Making you relax._ This time when she smiles he feels it, right in the middle of his skull, a distinctive sensation that his subconscious has long since coded as _Deanna_.

"It's working," he says out loud, and it should be disconcerting how his voice sounds more calm already. He's smiling down at her, too, without quite noticing. He really shouldn't let her manipulate his emotions like this right now - it's slightly euphoric, and the last thing anyone needs is a half-stoned First Officer -

_The last thing we need, Will, is you collapsing from exhaustion._

All right, he'll admit she has a point there.

_Of course. You should learn to trust me._ Her smile again, and this time it's hot inside his head. She's somewhere deep in his mind, now: he can feel the golden thread of her touch weaving through his awareness, but he can't follow it down quite far enough to find her. It's not an exaggeration to say that Deanna knows him better than he knows himself.

Then she's drawing back out, taking her time as she wanders through his head, and she's done her work well enough that he's not really in a rush for her to leave. She brushes through that one place that makes his skin tingle with a distinctly erotic charge: he retaliates without really thinking with a single fingertip, the lightest of touches along her hairline and down her cheek, and the heat swells in his head in a sudden pulse.

He knows just like that that she didn't come up here with the intent to seduce him out of his tension. It's more that his mind is an inviting place for her and sometimes she just can't really resist, the same way he sometimes finds himself unable to not touch that alien-warm skin the way he's doing right now.

Still, there has to be a line drawn somewhere, and he's fairly certain even in this empath-induced state that mingling bodily fluids in Jean-Luc Picard's ready room is some way beyond it.

Deanna smiles, obviously hearing that thought, and he's suddenly reminded that there are, of course, other options available. He's not entirely sure whether that's his mind or hers that reminds him. He's also not that bothered one way or the other.

_Come here._ She takes him lightly by the wrist and tugs him over to the couch. He tries not to grin too much like a fool as he follows her, or as he drops down and she steps in front of him, standing between his knees where his restless hands can come to rest back at her waist. She leans down and kisses him: softly, tenderly, but with some heat behind it. Her hands settle on his shoulders as he teases her tongue with his; she climbs onto the couch with him, kneeling, legs either side of his, without even thinking about stopping - even with a quiet, pleasurable hum in her throat as he pulls her hips close.

When she finally pulls her mouth back from his, her body is melded against every inch of him she can touch; she has his face in her hands, and her thumb strokes across his lower lip as she says, just loud enough, "Computer, lights off."

He raises an eyebrow at her. She can't see it, of course, in the sudden dark as the computer complies, but she'll know just the same, just the way he knows she's smiling back at him.

He's not sure he's ever been in this room in the dark before. Space travel being what it is, there would be no ambient light at all if not for the faint glow of the replicator panel in the corner, and that isn't nearly enough to see clearly by. The result is a kind of cocooning darkness that wraps around them, almost enough to forget precisely where they are and what's on his mind and why even this is probably unprofessional and a bad idea.

Deanna presses her thumb to his lips. _You just need to relax,_ she says simply. He smiles and strokes her temple in the darkness. He doesn't need any light to know where Deanna is, even when she's not this close.

Unprofessional and a bad idea by most people's standards, perhaps. _Most people not being Betazoid._

_Thankfully._

Deanna laughs softly. She slides one hand behind his head and kisses him again, and there's something almost feline in the soft rake of her nails against the back of his neck - almost enough to make him shiver, but for the warmth of her, a solid calm presence driving that particular need away.

They trade a succession of deep, slow kisses - the best kind, sometimes brief and some lingering, playing with each other, her fingertips running trails over his skin and her back straight under his absently roaming hands, and with every touch he can feel her more inside his mind. _Euphoric_ is definitely the word of the moment. He can't even remember how to be tense, right now - most especially when she touches that place in his mind again, the one that makes him tighten his hands on her and pull her in tighter against him, his skin sparking at the contact even through two layers of clothing.

_Mmm, Will,_ she murmurs in his head, tender and definitely sensual, definitely turned on, he can tell, can always tell - and he just has time to know what she's going to do before she's doing it, and the breath is driven from him and he's pressing his forehead against hers, bright sparks going off behind his eyes because she's just damn well _rewired_ him, the both of them, to drive all the physical need rising in his body and hers right into the intricate knot of their minds entwined together.

Relaxing is not how he would describe how it ever feels to have her do this. _Incredible_ falls far short. In that one moment hours could go by - he can hardly feel his skin, his body, as if it's somewhere miles off in the distance and the only thing in focus is Deanna, that deep golden burn of her presence inside him.

Somewhere he's breathing, and hard - his body might not be channelling his arousal but it's definitely reacting, and as his mind clears a little he can feel Deanna pressed against him, her face buried in his shoulder, her mouth hot against his neck.

_Damn,_ he mutters, heartfelt, and her amusement goes right through him.

_A little fast for you, imzadi?_

_Never,_ he thinks back, the mental equivalent of a broad grin. Sure, she was, a little, but he doesn't mind. It's hard to mind about anything that feels quite _this good_, and almost more because he wasn't quite expecting it yet, and he knows she was trying at least a little to take him by surprise for that very reason... she can't quite overload his too-Human mind any more, the way this might have when they were so much younger, but she can still come close and it still feels like live wires under his skull, heady and hot and so, so good.

It's all sensation. Not real and too real at the same time. All the pleasure centers in his brain are wide open, wanting more, and he kisses her hungrily as he reaches into her mind in turn the way she's taught him so very well, the way that makes her open up for him instantly and moan into his mouth.

She reacts to his touch with another playful mental caress: he pushes back, grinning against her skin as he trails his lips down her neck. He groans and quickly bites his lip - being too loud is a bad idea - as she presses into that one place in his mind again, harder this time, and sends a wild pulse of solid pleasure down his nerves.

_Oh, god - Deanna..._

She laughs right in his ear. "Is this helping?"

He seeks out a familiar, sensitive place in her mind, and her laugh falters into a languid moan. _Mmm..._

He grins: he got that right, then.

_Yes._ The word is accompanied by an erotic jolt of sensation somewhere behind his eyes. He grins.

_Good._ He wants to make her feel good, to sink into this and share it with her. His impatience is still as strong now as it was before she came in - but this he can have, can _do_ and he wants more of it, of her, wants to make her feel this and only this, only him - and how intoxicating is it that he can do this to her without anything more than kisses, all of it in his mind or hers, it's just - it's - damn it, there aren't any _words_ -

Deanna makes a soft, choked sound: he shudders and pulls her in and kisses her again, rough and hard and he loves this, not having to think or hold himself in check because Deanna is the only woman he's ever been with who really gives as good as she gets - god, the only woman who could be about make him _come_ inside his own damn _head_ -

_Come with me, then,_ she thinks, desperate, wanting it, and she pushes hard into him and oh _god_ it feels - he can feel her there, right inside him - she's _all_ he can feel - all there _is_, and that's fine, that's right, that the only reason for his existence is this, is to be with her -

His brain actually whites out from the influx of pure pleasure, then, hers and his, the silent hot explosion of it - he's not sure if he even makes a sound because he can't even feel his body, just this sweet hot rush that burns away everything but the golden connection between them. He loves her as madly in that moment as he ever does, ever has, can't even tell where his own self ends and Deanna begins...

When he can feel his own skin again, finally, however much later, he's at least still breathing and he's now holding a very relaxed Deanna, who's draped like something liquid and warm and decidedly sensual against him. Her hair is soft against his cheek and he turns his head and smiles into the warmth of it, feeling more than slightly drunk on the overload of sensation. She nuzzles at his neck in return, definitely feline now, and her affection is like a sweet silver bell sounding inside his head. _A little better now?_

He chuckles, inside or out loud he isn't even sure. It's not exactly a Starfleet approved method of relaxation, that's for sure, but it's absolutely the most effective. _Mmm._

_Hm. Good._ Deanna runs her fingers through the ends of his hair, idly, settling her head comfortably on his shoulder. He tilts his head to rest against hers in turn and deliberately keeps his eyes closed. Out on the bridge it's probably light, filled with the quiet but constant sounds of the ship and crew, but in here it's dark and warm and silent and Deanna is here with him, and that's enough for him to rest until morning comes round.

  


*

  



End file.
